You Already Know To Begin With The End In Mind. But Do You?

Teresa Torres argues that product teams should start by defining what success looks like, since a clear goal is the ultimate measure that makes alignment and decisions easier. She warns against drowning in dozens of metrics and recommends tracking a focused set of people-based success and growth funnels rather than raw actions. She advocates time-based signup cohorts to reveal cause-and-effect relationships from product changes, and mapping where users break down before attempting fixes. The piece matters because it gives PMs a practical, disciplined approach to measurement that avoids vanity metrics and guesswork.

01Key takeaways

• Define what success looks like before debating priorities, since an explicit goal drives alignment.
• Limit your dashboard to the metrics that reflect your goal and key funnels, not a hundred numbers.
• Measure the count of people succeeding rather than raw actions, especially early on.
• Analyze product changes using signup cohorts to see effects quickly and clearly.
• Map exactly where users break down and look for evidence against your assumptions before fixing anything.

02Key sections

Define success first

A simple question from a CFO helped the author realize that unclear success criteria cause alignment problems. The goal should be the primary measure of success.

Watch your funnels, not every metric

Teams often track too many numbers. Keep focus on the goal while monitoring success and growth funnels to ensure gains don't break other parts of the product.

Measure people rather than actions

Track the number of people achieving success instead of raw event counts, deferring per-person value metrics until broad success is established.

Use signup cohorts for cause and effect

Time-based cohorts show how product changes affect new users quickly, instead of waiting months for changes to ripple through the whole user base.

Find where breakdowns happen

Map user flows precisely to locate breakdowns before changing things, and assume your own understanding may be wrong.

03From the post

““It sounds like you need to define what success looks like.” This was such a simple statement. And yet, it had a profound impact on me. I was in my early days at Affinity Circles, leading our product team, and struggling with too many competing priorities. I was wasting time”

04Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.